Mick Hartley

When Islamists such as Hezbollah’s Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah talk of Israel “ceasing to exist”, then, as Michael Young argues in Lebanon’s Daily Star, they’re not just voicing Palestinian nationalist aspirations. They see the elimination of Israel as a religious duty. They really mean it:

One thing eternally confusing outside observers is that Hamas and Hizbullah are what have come to be described as “nationalist Islamists.” Because nationalism started essentially as a Western notion, because its reference point is something reassuringly tangible like territory, not Armageddon, the Westernized writer will see something of himself or herself in such Islamists groups, and will resort to the terminology of modern nationalism to describe their actions. Hizbullah liberated South Lebanon, Hamas is trying to do the same in Palestine; their goals are no different than those of courageous patriots everywhere who have fought against foreign occupation. The American professor Norman Finkelstein recently went on Lebanese television to compare Hizbullah with the Red Army during World War II. Others liken Hamas to the National Liberation Front in Algeria – or why not its namesake in South Vietnam? […]

One has to be careful in reading the statements of Islamist groups – or any political group for that matter. The flexibility of tactics counts for much. When Nasrallah argues that he will continue negotiating with Israel for the release of Arab prisoners, he’s temporarily replacing his long-term undertaking to hasten Israel’s demise with short-term gain. Ultimately, Hizbullah may fail in making Israel vanish, but it’s what Hizbullah and Hamas say about themselves, the way they define their aspirations, that determines their behavior. For outside observers to ignore or reinterpret their words in order to justify a personal weakness for these groups’ revolutionary seductions is both self-centered and analytically useless.